Not-So-Simple Simon

For the season finale at Appleseed
Productions, the trio of directors for this loving revival decided to
run the three separate components of Plaza Suite as a
40-year-old period piece, with no updating of costumes or cultural
references. Sometimes this enhances the comedy of lines, and other
times it undercuts characterization. A blustery husband complains how
much he’s paying a night for a room at New York City’s Plaza Hotel—“Fifty bucks!”—and
the audience quickly calculates where you might now park a car
overnight for that little in Midtown. Then again, when a successful
Hollywood producer shows up to meet an old girlfriend, should he really
be wearing cranberry polyester pants?

Plaza Suite came on the first wave of Simon’s huge success, three years after The Odd Couple,
when he had multiple shows running simultaneously, not all of them
hits. It also came when Simon was responding to critics who said his
successes were too much like television sitcoms, and that he had to
show us he was made of something more. At the February 1968 opening the
male and female leads in all three acts were taken by heavyweights
George C. Scott and Maureen Stapleton. Asking to deliver that much
range from community theater players is unfair, but the original
casting is a tip-off that Simon is offering more meat than souffle in
this meal. 

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That increased substance, we know today,
comes from Simon’s study of Anton Chekhov. The very suggestion would
have looked preposterous when Plaza Suite opened, but now we know better. Simon’s The Good Doctor (1973) was an homage to the Russian master, and the later semiautobiographical “BB” plays, especially the poignant Broadway Bound (1986), reek with Russian angst and pathos. But here we are in the first two acts of Plaza Suite
with dark comedies of character, where the occasional laughs do not
obscure deeply unsettling insights. Only in the third act does Simon
let loose with an uproarious farce.

Bryan Allen Jones directed the first
act, “Visitor from Mamaroneck,” surprisingly the heaviest-going of the
three. Karen (Binaifer Dabu) and Sam Nash (Bob Fullenbaum) return to
Suite 719 at the Plaza because their house is being painted. As Karen
remembers that this is the same room where they began their honeymoon
23 years earlier, she decides to celebrate by ordering champagne and
wearing a naughty, see-through red bustier. 

Late-arriving Sam does not share Karen’s
invitation and begins with a volley of complaints: the pain of his
dentist, having to listen to classical music on WQSR, and his weariness
of dieting. He also disputes Karen’s memory on their sharing of this
very room and even her recollection of how old she is. Not big things
in themselves but sure signs that they do not share the same worldview.
Later arriving still is Sam’s luscious secretary, Jean (Taylor Baker),
and Sam’s catastrophic announcement that he has to return to the office
for “work.”

As a domestic drama, an erring
middle-age husband is small time, but actress Dabu’s wide-ranging
emotional colors, from aging sex kitten to resigned martyr, transform
the whole business into precious metal. Dabu’s many nominations for
Syracuse Area Live Theater (SALT) awards, finally winning this year,
testify to her esteem among her colleagues, but until Plaza Suite we did not know Central New York’s only Parsee leading lady has within her a Jewish tragedienne.

The second act, “Visitor from
Hollywood,” is the shortest of the three and also the most cynical,
under Nora O’Dea’s direction. Jesse Kiplinger (Alan D. Stillman), a
successful but self-effacing film producer, is sharing what he thinks
is a light afternoon with Muriel (Jennifer DeCook), his old girlfriend
from Tenafly, N.J. Fluttery and flustered, Muriel has paid for only an
hour’s parking and isn’t sure how to talk to a faded heartthrob gone
big time. 

In earlier local productions, Jesse is a
shameless letch who would like to get into Muriel’s panties as quickly
as possible. Using the same words in the text, O’Dea portrays Muriel as
dominating the dialogue. She has sinful intimacy in mind as well, only
Jesse has to say the right magic words. They are the names of (now
dead) celebrities: Otto Preminger, Steve McQueen, Anthony Quinn and
Frank Sinatra. How can she resist? Come to think of it, this act is
also Neil Simon in his Jules Feiffer mode.

In this new interpretation, newcomer
DeCook has all the fun as Muriel, not admitting to herself what we
sense pretty quickly. As the producer, Stillman gives admirable support
with an agonized earnestness, telling Muriel he really prefers simple
candor and honesty.

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Costuming goes upmarket in the longish
third act, “Visitor from Forest Hills,” in which the well-to-do
Hubleys, Norma (Kathy Cooney) and Roy (Tom Minion), are trying to get
their bride daughter Mimsey (Taylor Baker) to come out of the toilet
and join the wedding party. Norma starts the tension, which rises
sharply when Roy storms in. Simon’s ability with dialogue, not just
gag-writing, comes to the fore here with character-revealing
insensitivity. It’s not just that bourgeois parents are blowing their
stacks in formal wear, but the ways in which they put their spending
ahead of understanding their children. Roy barks to Mimsey (behind the
door): “Stop crying on the dress. Use a towel!” 

Director Pete Zalizniak gets volumes of
support from Minion (who used to baby-sit Zalizniak during the
director’s wonder years). Minion borrows some leftover temper from his
mad judge in David Mamet’s Romance, an April production for Rarely Done.

Simon wrote Plaza Suite so that
three different one-acts could be performed on the same set. To set the
stage at Appleseed’s stomping grounds, Atonement Lutheran Church at 116
W. Glen Ave., William Edward White has come up with something that
looks like a luxury hotel, and Barbara Toman has dressed them
appropriately. Each director likes the set too much, however, and the
continual running back and forth between two wide rooms slows down the
action.

Still, Neil Simon should rest easy on his next birthday. Appleseed shows us there’s more to him than meets the ear.       

This production runs through July 5. See Times Table for information.